We walked down unpaved roads, kicking up pebbles with our doc martins and inhaling cigarettes in between kisses.
We climbed over a gate marked "No Trespassing" almost every day last spring just to drink coffee with our feet dangling over mounds of white rocks, stacked like abstract sculptures.
We woke up at 6 AM to play on the swing sets at South Abington before kids flooded the mulch with runny noses and raspy voices.
We watched plow trucks sweep up all of our mistakes off of your road from the edge of your bed and counted how many maneuvers it took that driver just to get through your alley way.
You yelled at me for putting my frozen hand on your cheek after I went outside to heat up my car for work.
We sunbathed on your neighbor's roof when the kids were at school and their parents were *******.
We drank cheap beer in the bath tub and pretended we were going swimming.
We told your sister kissing would make her pregnant at your mother's cherry wood coffee table, and acted appalled when she replied, "Well then how come I'm not pregnant."
I rubbed your back as you cried with your hands balled up into fists on your front porch steps.
I sat silently on your bathroom floor while you tore through the house, breaking random things in frustration.
I cleaned the open cut on the side of your jaw with peroxide, and held your knees down with my forearm as you squirmed around in stinging pain, without ever getting a clear explanation as to how it got there.
I drove your sister to school & fumbled over my words after she asked why you don't wanna have dance parties with her anymore.
I sat in the hospital with your mother and read her the newspaper every night after work.
I tried to hold you in bed, but you pulled away from me.
And when spring came around again, I wanted to walk to the quarry but you just wanted to watch tv.
And when summer came around again, there were no make believe swimming pools.
You'd sit down in the shower with your hands over your face, and your legs curled into your chest, trying hard to catch your breath.
I'd put a towel in the dryer and wrap you in it afterward.
I held you as long and as hard as I could,
But you were slipping.
And the second you lost your footing,
And I lost my grip,
You took me down with you
And we hit rock bottom together.
So I guess,
It was never hate that I should've feared.
All along it was love
Because love is more destructive
than hate when it goes to the wrong place

I woke up this morning to the vibration of base board heat kicking on and off to the cadence of the wind slapping against the tan siding of my two story home.
I was alone.
I lifted the comforter briefly, felt around for my phone, and then pulled it back down over me like cling wrap before the cool air of a poorly heated, hardwood bedroom crept in to meet my tired skin.
The screen was blank.
Just the time "9:08 AM",
towering over the date "Wednesday, February 10"
I was alone.
Really alone.

It's been 26 days since we stopped sleeping next to one an other.

26 days,

and today is the first day I woke up

and I didn't feel like

there was anything missing.

The last night in our old place
I drove to the Turkey Hill on Keyser
at two in the morning for peppermint mocha
creamer and then I came home and brewed
us a *** of coffee.

I wanted to sit across from you at that
little glass table,
as the clock hanging on the wall
behind your head
clicked quietly,
counting the time we had left,
and I wanted to smell the
ever-so-nostalgic
aroma of cheap coffee
in a creaky apartment building,
just as the sun began to
creep in through the blinds.

That was my last chance
for a pleasant snap shot.
I wanted to remember the art
and the poetry
and the sweetness
and the light
of loving you.

The thought of having
you sitting with your knees in your chest,
on the floor at the foot of your bed,
ignoring me as I lay face down
crying into my pillow,
as the lasting image of
that little, broken place on West Market
that we called "home" for two years
just seemed so wrong.
It seemed so unfair.

So, I crafted this pathetic reenactment
of mornings passed when we had
nothing we had to do & nowhere else
we'd rather be but sitting across from
each other at that little glass table
in the kitchen.

It wasn't believable though.

I was sitting in the same place,
with the same boy,
hearing the same sounds
and inhaling the same scents
as I'd grown so used to,
and yet I knew I didn't
belong here.
Not anymore.
I was in my own home,
the home we made together
& I was suddenly struck with
the debilitating ache of
feeling home-sick.

We knew it was over
three weeks before
either of us said it
out loud,
and it took three more weeks
before either of us acknowledged
that we'd said it out loud,
and it took three more weeks
before either of us began
to pack our things,
or tell our families.

But here we are.
Nowhere.
We are nowhere.
"We" don't exist.
Or maybe we do,
stagnant in our admiration.
In some alternate universe,
perhaps we are
counting the freckles
on each other's noses,
mid-August.

But in this universe,
I am sprawled out across
a painfully uncomfortable
futon with pillows stacked on
either side of me
for comfort,
and you're probably
sitting by yourself
in your white SUV
that rattles when it moves,
smoking a bowl while
the heat kicks in,
and you are freezing,
and you don't want to go to work,
but you're going to.

And I am freezing,
and I don't want to move,
but I'm going to.

Life goes on,
and on and on.

And today I woke up
and there was nothing missing.